EDINBORO, Pa. -- The Rock took care of business Saturday afternoon and now can only wait and see if it will earn a berth in the NCAA Division II playoffs.
Nate Crookshank passed for four touchdowns and Corey Manfull ran for two other scores to lead The Rock to a 59-34 win over hosting Edinboro in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference-Western Division action.
The win gave the Green and White a 9-2 overall record and a 4-2 mark in division play, which is good for a third-place finish.
It remains to be seen if that effort will be enough to convince the regional selection committee to include SRU in the six-team regional playoff field.
The Rock, which seeks its first playoff berth since 1999, entered Saturday's game ranked eighth in the region and apparently out of playoff consideration.
But the two teams ranked directly ahead of SRU in last week's poll suffered losses Saturday. Fifth-ranked Bentley lost a 29-3 decision to No. 5 Bryant, while No. 6 Indiana (Pa.) dropped a 41-35 decision at Bloomsburg.
That sets the stage for approximately 16 hours of agonizing by 20th-year head coach George Mihalik and the other members of The Rock program while they wait the selection committee's decision Sunday morning.
The Green and White certainly did their part Saturday to impress the selection committee as SRU amassed 499 yards in total offense in the game -- the 10th time in 11 games this season The Rock had more than 400 yards in offense.
Crookshank led the offensive attack with 212 yards passing on a 15-of-23 efficiency without an interception. He threw two TD passes to Paul Favers (15 and 57 yards) and one each to Terry Grossetti (36 yards) and Frank Cremonese (six yards).
The TD tosses gave Crookshank 23 this fall, which is a new SRU single-season record. The old mark of 22 was set by John Linhart in 1994.
Grossetti finished Saturday's game with four catches for 70 yards, Favers had three receptions for 94 yards, Cremonese caught two passes for 17 yards and Colin Golden hauled in four passes for 15 yards.
Manfull rushed for 172 yards on 23 carries in the game, including TD runs of one and 17 yards in the third quarter.
Defensively, The Rock allowed Edinboro quarterback Trevor Harris to throw for 375 yards and two TDs, but picked him off four times and sacked him twice.
The Rock defensive finished the game with five pass interceptions and one fumble recovery and also forced the Fighting Scots (7-4, 3-3) into two other fumbles.
Sam Morant had two interceptions, Tyler Boudreau an interception and a fumble recovery and Dom Razzano an interception to account for SRU's takeaways.
Boudreau, who finished the game with seven tackles, also had three tackles for loss (-17 yards) and two quarterback sacks (-12 yards).
Edinboro finished the game with 458 yards, but had only 83 yards rushing.
The Rock held a 10-0 lead at the end of one period on the strength of a 32-yard field goal by C.J. Bahr and the 15-yard Crookshank-to-Favers TD toss.
SRU added three second-period TDs -- a 26-yard run by Ryan Lehmeier, the Crookshank-to-Cremonese TD toss and the 36-yard Crookshank-to-Grossetti TD toss -- to offset 14 Edinboro points and take a 31-14 lead into intermission.
Manfull's TD runs offset two Edinboro TDs in the third stanza to send The Rock into the final period with a 45-26 lead.
The second Crookshank-to-Favers TD toss and a 28-yard scoring run by Damarcus Cleckley sandwiched the Fighting Scots' final TD to account for the final margin.
Notes:
Manfull finished the regular season with 1,258 yards rushing, the eighth best mark in Rock history -- and he only played nine games. His per game average of 140 yards projected over 11 games would have given him 1,538 yards, which would have been the second highest total in school history and only 63 yards shy of the school record (1,601 by LaMonte Coleman in 1994).
The Rock scored 392 yards in 11 regular-season games, which is only 41 points shy of the single-season school record of 431 set in 13 games in 1997.
The Rock's 59-point total Saturday was its highest since a Week 2 win in 2000 at West Virginia Wesleyan, when SRU put up 68 points.
The Rock's point total Saturday was the highest allowed by Edinboro since Bloomsburg scored 65 in the season finale in 1999.